The Guitar Player's Resource
Stepping shyly from the background of a stable of Cincinnati bands to the solo spotlight is guitarist George Cunningham with his first CD, the eclectic, nearly-all-instrumental Stumblingham, subtitled "An American Album of Unfamiliar Music". Truth in advertising - at first, everything will be unfamiliar, but a few spins in your CD player, and you rapidly become intimate with the supreme variety of sounds, grooves, tones and creative dementia marking Cunningham's work. He integrates (are you ready?) surf, Latin, Celtic, Middle Eastern, acoustic fingerstyle, '30s jazz and cartoon music - in both hi-fi and lo-fi. Even the titles are creative, from the energetic "Missletoe" to "Art Carne" to the mandolin sounds of "Debussy Fields". Not a wankfest (aw... maybe next time), but a guitar album through and through. George Cunningham was originally profiled in the June-July, 2005 edition of The Undiscovered.
George has occupied the electric and acoustic guitar chairs for critically heralded Cincinnati bands The Graveblankets, Warsaw Falcons, Pike 27 and gypsy jazz aficionados The Faux Frenchmen. Produced, co-written coddled and tolerated by longtime collaborator and colleague Chris Arduser, the duo consciously decided not to subject listeners to endlessly spewed figures of guitar notage (darn... we'll keep hoping), focusing on their fourteen original compositions. George states, "It's with '50s, '60s and '70s instrumental pop records by people like Booker T and the MGs, Duane Eddy, Dennis Coffey, Link Wray and Buck Owens' Buckaroos that we've made this record."
Cunningham's live band The Flammables includes Stumblingham contributor John Schmidt on electric bass and Jesse Feaster on drums and percussion, as well as Arduser on various instruments.
George Cunningham
United States
Web site: www.graveblankets.com